Dancing On Ice judge Jason Gardiner claims co-star Phillip Schofield gave him a terse one-word answer when he confronted him over allegations of a relationship with a young runner, it has been reported.
Australian-born Gardiner, 51, says he first started to hear rumours in 2020 about an alleged affair after seeing Schofield with the runner on the set of Dancing On Ice.
Gardiner says he sent 61-year-old Schofield a private message on Twitter about the rumours around the time the former This Morning host ‘came out’ live on the ITV show.
He told The Sun: “I said, ‘I know this is a very difficult moment for you and I support you in your decision to come out, but I also feel that I need to ask you about certain rumours that are going around online and are you aware of them?”
He claims Schofield replied with one word: “Seriously?”
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Gardiner added: “That was it. It was very dismissive and that made me uneasy because I thought, ‘I’ve reached out to you very authentically’, and it kind of really p***ed me off.”
Schofield has since come out and admitted that he did indeed have an affair with a much younger colleague, saying he had an “unwise but not illegal” relationship and then admitted to lying about it.
He has quit This Morning after hosting the show for two decades and has left ITV completely.
In a statement shared less than a week on from his exit from the daytime TV show, he said: “In an effort to protect my ex-colleague, I haven’t been truthful about the relationship.
“But my recent, unrelated, departure from This Morning fuelled speculation and raised questions which have been impacting him, so for his sake it is important for me to be honest now.
“I am painfully conscious that I have lied to my employers at ITV, to my colleagues and friends, to my agents, to the media and therefore the public and most importantly of all to my family.
“I am so very, very sorry, as I am for having been unfaithful to my wife.
“I have therefore decided to step down from the British Soap Awards, my last public commitment, and am resigning from ITV with immediate effect expressing my immense gratitude to them for all the amazing opportunities that they have given me.”
Schofield has been linked with a move to TalkTV, but his lawyer has rebuffed those suggestions, saying: “Absolutely not as far as I know”, to the question of whether he will be making a return to our screens.
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